Gen Con - Friday + WAR!
Posted by Jay | Filed under Blog, Game Industry
I thought I would let War’s NDA lifting rule the day yesterday! So without further ado..
Gen Con Impressions for Friday!
Morning Talks
I rushed out the door Friday to catch the 4th Edition preview over in the Marriott. We were assured that the many many classes and races that are missing from the PHB will be added. They just happen to be in hiding… likely story!
I had the great opportunity to talk shop with Richard, one of the designers on the project. Overall, as I mentioned in my review of Thursday, the periodicals business is in trouble. RPG companys are having to aggressively sell or change their business model to stay afloat. I inquired as to the recruiting methods inherent within the system and the book, since we’re all aware that releasing a new version/patch/edition of any product is mainly a retention practice. The answer was pretty standard. “We’re adding online tools. We have starting adventures in almost any book.”
Time will tell whether a new generation of pen and paper geeks will emerge given the rise of video games as an expressive medium.
Games Played - Warhammer Online
I just couldn’t get enough of Warhammer Online! I spent a good 2 hours standing at those uncomfortable kiosks, testing out different classes. I focused mainly on questing this time through. I can say the grind in Warhammer will be much more enjoyable than the grind to max level in WoW.
As an example, the public quests are amazing! I believe there’s a public quest in every major area. I only got to experience the Dark Elf version, and lemme say, Epic with a capital E! I haven’t experienced fighting Nagafen style dragon since well… Everquest. After two small quest chains, a dragon spawns. Big Red Dragon! I happen to know that Wow doesn’t introduce a boss style encounter, a real boss style encounter until after DM/WC. Eat it!
There’s one aspect to Warhammer that distresses me. Throughout my entire experience, I realized I was never being trained in the basics of the game. Whether this is true or not for release remains to be seen. I think Mythic may be expecting that players of Warhammer already know how to play MMOs. This won’t work in the short run for 2 reasons:
- Just like LotRO, new players will actually be fans of the IP and not of MMOs in general. They may not have any familiarity with how to play an MMO and may or may not be turned off.
- Many respected bloggers out there aren’t giving War a better review than WoW. There is a paradigm shift in the focus between the two games, besides those focused they’re largely carbon copies.
These are my initial impressions of the game. I hope that War is very successful! I want to see it garner 2 million subscribers in one year. At least then we’ll know that the market can support two giants!
